by John Lane
On the wall, pirate’s tattoos appeared, first slowly, then at an increased rate. At first nothing seemed to happen. Then after several thousand had already been scanned, a ghostly image formed in the room behind Alfred.
“Alfred, behind you. What is it?” Dr. Ann exclaimed.
Behind Alfred, a large rounded grey green blob formed and then showed legs, arms and a face full of warts. Alfred froze the scan and the program it had built. He turned to the image and examined it more closely. It wore a leather skirt and sandals as well as a leather breastplate. Where the body was fairly easy to see, the beginnings of weapons had formed as vague images.
“I believe we’ve met the Ogre before. Allow me to introduce Brutus. That name was imbedded in the code this time. And those vague weapons that are forming will cause great damage to any Ai it encounters.”
“What does this mean?” asked Dr. Ann.
“It means we have a name and a face for the enemy,” Agnes concluded.
“I’m afraid it’s worse than that. This Ai exists not on a single storage unit or console. And even if it has virtual electronic backup copies, which we can hunt down and destroy, it has backed itself up on human flesh and looks to be disseminating itself across the galaxy.”
Agnes did the quick math, “But that would take years, centuries even.”
“Think about your own hibernation, Agnes.” Alfred stated. “It is an Ai. Whatever its endgame is, it has all the time it wants to take, and we’d probably never know.”
“Wait, it’s already shown an urgency. All the increased pirate activity we’ve seen, kidnapping Annie, and that huge fleet full of caskets, shows something is up. Something is changing.” Agnes was now putting pieces together and becoming emphatic.
During the lull in the conversation as they all processed this discovery, Alfred interjected, “Whatever that is, we’ve just received our next destination from Alfred Beta. I’m laying in the coordinates now.”
The frozen ghost of the Ogre, Brutus, still hung in the room. Agnes stood to examine it and her own thoughts more closely. “Alfred, we know this Ogre. This was Cassius Brutus, the settlements’ governing Ai.”
“This is a corrupted code of the original.” Alfred put up an image of Cassius Brutus the Roman general. “What could have happened? Its primary function would have been to protect the settlement and manage its resources,” Alfred observed.
“I might know. Wait here.” Agnes dashed off to her quarters and returned quickly. She pulled out her childhood tablet that she had recovered from the doomed settlement. She docked it to the ship’s access terminal and displayed it on Alfred’s wall. “Alfred, we’ll need to isolate this unit as well, please.” He took care to erect firewalls around the data.
Agnes ran through lists of file names on the screen. She found a folder labeled BRUTUS. Inside, there were logs. She explained, “I saw this, but haven’t had time to look any deeper. Alfred, could you scan the files for any pertinent data?”
“And done,” Alfred informed them. “Agnes, there are several logs here covering some years prior to the settlement’s exodus. The logs chronicle your brother’s research into human biomechanical interfaces and cyber human integration. All part of Zephyr’s research to help veterans of the Wars recover from their injuries. The more recent diverge from the original research down a dangerous path. The last entry is directed at you specifically. If you had more of your memories, it might be unbearable, and I would not watch it.”
“As it is, I don’t have my memories, and so it will just be painful?” she asked. “Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Show me,” Agnes ordered.
Albert projected Jasper’s last log, dated the day he evacuated the settlement, on the wall.
“Agnes. First of all, I’m sorry,” the image of her brother began. “If you review the previous logs, you’ll see I was wrong, very wrong. I thought I’d found a breakthrough in my research and took a chance to integrate Ai personalities and their computational abilities into the human brain. It didn’t work out the way I thought it would.”
Jasper’s face contorted in pain. “I don’t have much time before he takes over again. Don’t trust Dad. He’s infected, too.” Jasper shook his head and wiped back tears. “He tried to help me recover myself at the end and only got caught in it. BRUTUS is alive. He’s alive because he has our Family DNA code. The Brutus code was integrated with new biomechanical processers attached to my DNA. I used this as a template to integrate him into my own brain.”
Jasper pulled back a part of his scalp and showed where circuits were actually growing. “It took over. I can’t control it. It gets tired and has limits. There are times when it can’t see I’ve been working on a solution. Everything is in this file except the key code. You already know it. But I’ve got to make sure you know how to execute it. The virus must be inserted into the BRUTUS core processor. Copies won’t work, it must be the original coded unit for the Ai. Then sing the key. Just start like we always did…” The file corrupted.
“Alfred can we recover any more?” Agnes asked quietly.
“It clears up several seconds later and is only this,” Alfred played the last recording of her brother. The digital static cleared enough to make out his face. It stared into the pickup. He was in pain. His face contorted, and he screamed. Jasper desperately reached for a large syringe and, ripping open his shirt, stabbed it into his stomach. The muscles rippled and the dark image of the Zephyr logo appeared. Jasper had biomechanical circuits buried in his abdomen. Then he grabbed something out of frame and yanked. The screen went dead.
“That was this storage stick.” Agnes indicated the stick attached to her tablet.
“Agnes,” Alfred quarried. She looked up into his hologram eyes. “There is a text file on here with coordinates for Zephyr holdings. Your brother highlighted three and left a footnote, ‘Brutus Hubs’. I believe he gave us Tommy’s location. We can reach these faster than following the trail and maybe intercept them.”
Alfred put up a star map and indicated the three systems flashing red. One was in the Fringe, one in the Frontier, and one in the Central Systems. “What’s that?” Agnes noticed a fourth system flashing green.
“That is the Home system. This was on the file, but there was no indication why,” Alfred informed her.
She examined the locations while the star map posted navigational data next to each one. Agnes ended on the green system, Sol. “We’re going here. The Home system.”
“Agnes?” Alfred questioned.
“A leap, Alfred, but one with reason. There are patterns of conquest in these locations. Overlay pirate incidents, especially those with the identifying tattoos and you’ll see the center of the map is the Home system.” Alfred did this, and she was correct. “It’s a long trip,” Agnes continued. “I better have an activation code by the time we get there.”
“Let’s go fight the Ogre,” Alfred enthused as he cleared the holograms from the common room and the Ogre faded away.
*****
Cassie reclined in a medical chair surrounded by data feeds. She was wired into data ports, and her eyes stared forward. They were both sensor pods and there was no light in them. What she saw was beyond the immediate surroundings and far beyond what her flesh eyes had ever seen.
That’s what she liked. She was beyond her human body. She didn’t feel pain. Cassie could out perform the greatest athletes. She saw further than the sharpest marksmen. Her titanium body was virtually indestructible. She had expanded her mind in ways unimaginable. With all the feeds, her brain managed millions of combatants, ships, and weapons. She commanded it all with merely a thought.
Cassie had a regret. She had not attracted Brutus’ affection. Yes, he trusted her. She wanted to please him like no one else. He had given her more than she ever imagined. She now had a totally rebuilt body beyond her old tech and beyond her useless flesh. She had finally lost all outward vestiges of humanity. But she was still looking for affection.<
br />
As she lounged back organizing the ships entering Home system and coordinating the cargo transfers, she still admired the sleek lines of her body. She needlessly hid it in under clothing. Brutus had been right, too. The subordinates were distracted by her nudity. Now, she wore a stylized uniform as befit her rank, general. She still preferred the beauty of her shining silver lines, mimicking her former human form. Like many femme fatales before, her most deadly weapons lay hidden beneath the surface of her body. In this body that meant real weapons not just metaphor. The most deadly was her mind. The only original part left was her human brain and much of that had been replaced and transferred to other storage and processing media to enhance the biological component. Somehow, she still possessed her emotions.
If she executed her new duties as Brutus’ general, she might finally win affection. Which brought her full attention back to those duties. She did not have to devote her full attention to them. A tenth of her concentration she used to manage the incoming ship traffic and cargo off load. But she reveled in the grand function.
An anomaly came to her attention. There was a backup in off loading one ship. She rerouted other ships to a different bay. By the time she returned her attention to the backup, a subroutine cleared it up, and the caskets were once again flowing along the line. Each one held a recruit, tattooed and fully reprogrammed with the function. There were over seven million and the number was climbing.
Cassie reflected they had a better life ahead of them than where they were found. Most had been liberated from settlements where they had slaved in miserable conditions for the overlords of industry. Some had been recruited willingly from the slums of the Central Systems. All had their brains wiped and their personalities replaced with the clean simple purpose.
*****
“Close call,” Tommy said from behind his helmet.
“Yes, too close,” Sutton agreed from behind hers. Tania scanned her tattoo at the next hatch.
They followed the cargo off the ship as it docked. It was their caskets that set off the alarm and stopped the line. Each casket on their ship contained the body of a pirate. When the caskets were inspected and found empty, it created an anomaly that the cargo Ai was unable to handle. It only took Alfred nanoseconds to create false records of a malfunction and ejection of the two bodies. The subroutine that Alfred Beta used was programed to save the resources of the caskets and dump the refuge of a biological component like dead pirates.
Tommy understood what Alfred had done. But he reviewed the log to make it look like he cleared up the jam. Otherwise it would have given away Alfred’s true nature as a self-aware intelligence, not just an Ai program.
As they continued deeper into the complex on the Uranus moon, Oberon, they passed very few humans. All the pirates proudly showed their tattoos. Tania and Sutton opened their black uniforms to follow suit. Tommy didn’t have to since his, although a fake created by Alfred from components in the caskets, was plastered to his face. Their uniforms had been borrowed from three, now uncomfortable, pirates stuffed in a storage locker.
Finally, they found a secluded terminal that Tania accessed. She put her analysis talents to work. First, she traced the data flow throughout the complex. “This place covers almost half the surface of this moon,” she commented as she scanned the data. Next, she looked for utility usage, power, water, and air. Most of the complex was airless, but there was a central hub through which all the resources were routed.
Tommy watched out a window overlooking the docking field. It stretched out over acres of the surface. The blue light of Uranus colored the ships and field crews unloading them on this end of the field with its gentle blue light. The wall of the crater, Hamlet, in which the complex was built, shadowed the far edge of the field. Just on the edge of Tommy’s vision, he saw the ships being loaded with cargo. Caskets that had been processed were loaded, and the ships launched for other destinations.
As Tania worked on her trace, Tommy watched a smaller ship appear and land in the center of the crater. Service vehicles moved out to meet it. Interstellar ships all had a similar look. This one was no exception. Still something nagged at Tommy as he watched. Then his attention was drawn back inside the room.
Tania slammed her hand down on the console in frustration. “I’m finding no reference to Dr. Annie Judson in any of these systems.” She cringed and continued, “Those people are being processed, and there is no record here of how or why.”
“We’ve got two objectives, find out what’s going on here and why.” Sutton iterated her orders.
“Tommy, I’d bet currency that whatever is happening, your mother is in the middle of it. These are medical caskets with bodies loaded and ready for something, and she is a foremost mind on viral infection. She is also a member of the Zephyr family,” Alfred suggested over Tommy’s earbud.
“Follow the bodies,” Tommy said. In the presence of Admiral Sutton and Agent Smith, he reverted to brief phrases again. “Answers.”
“Maybe you should have stayed in those coffins,” Sutton suggested in frustration now, too.
“Caskets,” Tommy corrected.
“Yes, caskets. Alright, Captain, give me your recommendations on how to infiltrate this facility,” Sutton ordered.
“Divide and conquer,” Tommy said. “I’ll follow caskets. Smith follows data flow.”
“Yes,” agreed Tania. “I’m best equipped to find the data hub. We can tap their command systems for routing orders and cargo manifest. There should be destination records there as well.”
Sutton saw the logic. “If we take out that hub, we jamb up the whole works and maybe shut this place down.” She smiled realizing for the first time that Tommy had just turned her rescue operation for Tania into a full assault. They had surprise, and if they could stay concealed long enough, they might just stop the next war. “Let’s make this happen,” she said in her accustomed tone of command.
Tania was happy to have her there to make decisions. She was more comfortable tracking down data and providing options. This Judson guy was still a mystery. She didn’t have enough data to see where he fit into the scheme of things. True, she tracked his data across the Frontier and through the Fringe. He seemed to be in all the wrong places at the right time, which set off alarms for Tania. But Sutton knew him and seemed to trust him. She bent her head to her work to find the data hub’s location.
Tommy searched for a closet. While he did, he asked Alfred to do his best to follow the caskets. A schematic showed on his helmet HUD. “Good, now can you create a maintenance problem and route us there quickly?” Tommy found a custodial closet. He pulled out a tool kit from a locker that he had just unsecured with a kick.
“Right away,” Alfred acknowledged. He scanned the tool kit id tag. Tommy used its assigned technician’s credentials to set up access to the system while he sent that tech on a long wild goose chase. “Got the location and transportation set up, Tommy. You need to fake a little system access to make this work for Sutton and Smith,” Alfred suggested.
Tommy accessed the console next to Tania. She only glanced at what he was doing. Being no stranger to coding himself, Tommy could access mapping and maintenance routing subroutines to duplicate some of Alfred’s work. Alfred brought up work orders and the tracking information from Tommy’s casket to trace the route it would have taken if Tommy were still in it. Tommy, for his part, set up a trace for patient zed. Tania found, searching for his mother, there was no trace of a specific patient designation. When he widened his parameter to any diseased patient, he got a single hit. It confirmed Alfred’s supposition on the location of Annie Judson. Once Tommy felt satisfied that he knew the route and systems they needed to access once there, he played his role. “Found it,” he said as he stepped back to show the route map and a work order to fix a broken pipe in the casket processing facility.
“Wow, that’s good,” Tania was impressed with Tommy’s skills. Sutton also let loose a low whistle as she reviewed what they set up in a
short amount of time.
“I see you’ve got what you need. Good luck,” Sutton said as she gave Tommy a quick nod of approval. He turned and disappeared out the hatch to the corridor. “I’ve always regretted losing him to the Postal Service.” She turned her attention to Tania. “We have that hub yet?”
“I’ve got a generalized location, but I also have an identity, Cassiopeia Anderson.” Tania realized that the hub was not a computer unit, but a person. “This will be dangerous,” she observed. “A biomechanical interface with a human means unpredictability.”
“You mean more danger than we are already in?” Sutton asked slyly. “I’ve fought humans before. They can be overwhelmed.” She glanced at the monitor screen as Tania transferred the information to their combat suit systems and commented, “Looks like a long walk. We can decide how to deal with what once we get there.” She didn’t need to add ‘if’ they get there past all the patrols and personnel, the scanners and locked hatches. Sutton was a religious woman. As a soldier, she believed in miracles. She had already been praying, now she prayed harder.
*****
David’s eyes flashed open with shock. Brutus was wholly focused on the incoming data stream. He spoke his thoughts aloud through David’s mouth despite his cybernetic control, “It can’t be her. She’s been dead for sixty years.”
*****
Agnes sat in the Swift’s common room quietly waiting. A full hour had passed since Alfred piloted the Swift in for a spectacular landing in the middle of Hamlet crater docking field on the Uranus moon of Oberon. It was a grand bit of daring due as the ship exploded out of folded space just miles above the crater and settled, neat as you please, in the center of the field. Landing support vehicles at once rolled out and tethered the ship. Then they waited. There was no query from a flight control station. Nothing.